In the 1880s, Gilbert and Sullivan wrote a comic opera set in a fictional Japanese town where the Mikado was the boss.

“My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, to make the punishment fit the crime,” sang the Mikado while reciting ways to torment miscreants. For instance, he said amateur tenors should be required to sing to crowds of wax figurines and boring social guests be sentenced to sit through lengthy sermons in the German language.

Was the Mikado right? Do you think the punishment should fit the crime?

In February, at a White House luncheon for governors, President Trump, 78, asked if Maine’s governor was present and he ranted about how Maine refused to obey his edict barring trans girls from participating in women's sports.

Gov. Janet Mills, 77, sitting a few yards from the president, reacted to his challenge and said she would comply with state and federal law.

He shot back. “I, we are federal law, and you better comply, or you won’t get any federal funding.”

Mills replied, "See you in court.” And POTUS followed his threat by impacting the schoolchildren of the Pine Tree State for defying his edict.

Mills says she based her position on state law and the official position of state school officials. Maine Principals Association governs school sporting events. They ruled the Trump trans ban and the Maine Human Rights Act are in conflict. So, when it comes to gender identity, the MPA said they would continue to follow Maine law.

What is at stake? Are dozens of trans girl athletes dominating the women's events, making it unfair for the other competitors? Are they making a mockery of women's sports? Or is this just a red herring, an attractive distraction to draw your attention away from other MAGA events, like his tariffs, annexing Greenland, or attacking Social Security and Medicaid?

Not exactly. There are just two trans women playing sports out of Maine's 171,059 students in 608 schools. So, because Maine school officials made a decision, and the governor backed them, the feds are punishing the rest of 171,059 school kids by withholding the taxpayer funds that pay for 18,482,570 meals and snacks for hungry schoolchildren.

In addition, the Trump minions pulled about $1.4 million in federal funding for the state prison system because there was a trans woman in the women's prison system. These federal funds provided for substance counseling, prescriptions, and doctor visits.

To put the icing on the cake, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, a guy named Leland Dudek, decided to suck up to the Mikado by punishing our governor and the parents of Maine's newborn children. He stopped a program that lets our new parents obtain a social security number for their kids at the birthing hospital rather than drive to a local SS office. This chore is not a big deal, but it adds one more task to the new parents' plate as they cope with the family expansion and its newfound responsibilities.

Why would some faceless bureaucrat in Washington do such a thing? Here is what he said (I am not making this up). "I was ticked off at the governor of Maine for not being very cordial to the president.”

But, Uncle Leland was not alone in his criticism of Gov. Mills and the citizens of the great state of Maine. The other day, the MAGA Mikado revenge gang, led by the attorney general herself, tried to withhold other money until the state attorney general filed suit and a federal district court judge hit the pause button.

In addition to the funding cuts to hungry Maine schoolchildren, the POTUS bureaucratic posse demanded Janet Mills take a knee and bow down to the White House. Here is what the POTUS himself wrote on social media. "We need a full-throated apology from the Governor herself and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the Federal Government again before this case can be settled.”

But there is more. During the COVID crisis, POTUS insulted her as a dictator who did not know what she was doing. Here is her official response. “What Maine people heard today was more of the same incendiary rhetoric and insults he uses to try to divide us and to stoke tension and fear. What Maine people heard today was largely devoid of fact and absent of reality. I have spent the better part of my career listening to loud men talk tough to disguise their weakness,” said the Mills statement.

Doesn't it make you wonder if this whole mess is over two trans women daring to play school sports, or because a strong Maine woman dared to defy the Mikado?